Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘They make us buy state bonds, and then spend the funds on ammunition to kill us with!’ Big Chan shouted. It looked as though he’d had to crawl through the bushes during the evacuation. His short-sleeved shirt had large green stains. The words HEIR OF THE DRAGON, which Hou Dejian had calligraphed across the back, were smeared with soil.

‘Fucking bastards!’ Little Chan shouted, lifting Big Chan’s guitar into the air. ‘I’ll go to the mountains of Yunnan and return with an army of peasants who will rid us of these bloody tyrants.’

‘Be careful,’ Dong Rong said, rushing up to us. ‘The army fired a round of shots at the public toilets back there a moment ago, after they saw someone take a flash photograph from the roof.’ He swept his hair back. He’d lost his sunglasses.

‘Butchers! Butchers!’ everyone shouted in unison as an army truck approached.

We walked slowly, in scattered ranks, occupying only one side of the road. Soon, we came to a stop to inspect a pool of blood on the ground. A pair of trainers lay in the sticky fluid that was bisected by a thick red wheel mark. Local residents told us that tanks had driven down this road shooting randomly into the crowd and that a young man was hit. His blood was spurting everywhere, but the army wouldn’t let anyone go to his rescue. If his wife hadn’t got on her knees and begged them to let her go to him, he would have died there on the street…

The floodlight shining outside makes the night as bright as day. The labourers are trying to demolish the balcony of the flat next door. There’s a deafening noise of drilling and hammering. The whole building shakes, then seconds later, I hear the balcony crash to the ground. The steel bars that run through to our balcony are bent so badly that the metal window frames twist, shattering the glass panes. Clouds of dust shoot into my room. ‘That’s my balcony!’ my mother yells. ‘You’ve no right to touch it!’ She coughs into her sleeve, grabs a torch and opens the front door. When she steps outside, the labourers shout, ‘Get back in! The roof’s about to come down. Get back into your flat now!’

‘How dare you take that roof down! My son is still lying in bed…’

‘We’re leaving the section of roof that covers your flat,’ the head labourer says. ‘Now go back inside. It’s not safe to stand there. Look, the landing’s been removed…’

Now my mother won’t be able to fetch any more of the flattened boxes she hangs outside the front door and uses to fuel the stove.

They start drilling into the water and sewer pipes. The noise is unbearable. The building judders so much that my body is tossed up and down. The iron bed slowly slides across the floor. I feel my eardrums are about to explode… Ten years ago, I promised my mother I’d take her to America and fulfil my father’s wish to be buried in free soil. She should be spending her days in the sunlight, chatting with her retired or laid-off friends, performing fan dances with her neighbours in the park… When the sun shines, even the dust is transparent. I want ultraviolet waves to fall on my face, on the palms and backs of my hands, on my clothes, my hair, my shoes. I don’t care if I’m inside a cage or outside, as long as the sunlight can reach me. When the sun comes out, there will be a warm breeze. A few leaves will fall from the trees. It will be the beginning of a new day…

‘Do you dare violate the rights of a Chinese citizen when the national flag is flying?’ I imagine she’s brought out the national flag I took on a march ten years ago and is waving it at them. She must have put it on a pole some time ago, waiting for this moment to arrive.

‘Put that flag down and get back inside! You’re illegally occupying state property. And you have no right to fly the national flag…’

‘The people will be victorious!’ my mother yells. ‘Down with Fascism!’

In the Land of the Nobles there is a plant called the xunhua. Its life is very short. It sprouts in the morning and dies the same evening.

As dawn approached, the air filled with a smell of scorched tyres and khaki uniforms.

A huge convoy of army trucks drove past, packed with soldiers. A crowd of about thirty men in white underwear passed us on the opposite side of the street and gave us the victory sign. Tang Guoxian said they were armed police who had thrown away their uniforms and refused to follow government orders.

Big Chan and Little Chan attached our university banner to some twigs and held it aloft, which made our group seem a little less bedraggled. But I was so exhausted by now I could hardly walk, let alone find the energy to cry out slogans. One restaurant we passed had already hung up a banner that said RESOLUTELY PROTECT THE GREAT LEADERS OF THE PARTY’S CENTRAL COMMITTEE. When Wu Bin saw it, he snatched his cigarette lighter from Tang Guoxian’s pocket, rushed over and set it alight.

About two thousand of us had left the Square, but our crowd seemed to dwindle the further we went, like a stream of water flowing into dry land. Yu Jin was carrying Mimi’s backpack. Mimi and Bai Ling were walking hand in hand. Xiao Li was traipsing barefoot behind Chen Di. The flags we’d brought with us from the Square were tattered and torn.

Heading north, we reached the Liubukou intersection. We were back on Changan Avenue again, having looped round from the west. We stood still and stared at the red walls of Zhongnanhai, knowing that behind them, the leaders who’d ordered this massacre were relaxing in their luxurious villas. Thousands of soldiers stood triumphantly outside the walls, rifles at the ready. A long line of tanks and armoured carriers had formed a solid blockade, screening off the view to the Square. Behind them, a green sun hovered at the horizon.

Wang Fei switched on his black megaphone and shouted, ‘The people will be victorious! Down with Fascism!’

Tang Guoxian waved our university flag in the air, and everyone shouted Wang Fei’s slogans, repeating them faster and faster. But as soon as the girls began shouting, they burst into tears.

Bai Ling borrowed Wang Fei’s megaphone and cried, ‘Don’t look at the soldiers. They’re trying to intimidate us. Ignore them.’ Her voice was hoarse. She was straining so hard to produce a noise, the tendons on her neck were bulging.

One of the tanks suddenly left the blockade, roared towards us and shot a canister of tear gas which exploded with a great bang in the middle of our crowd. A cloud of yellow smoke engulfed us. My throat burned and my eyes stung. I felt dizzy and couldn’t stand straight. Mimi fainted. As I tried to drag her over to the side of the road, I stumbled and fell.

While we were still trying to crawl our way out of the acrid smoke, I heard another tank roar towards us. It paused for a moment in the middle of the road, then rumbled forward again and circled us. As it swerved round, its large central gun swung over my head and knocked down a few students standing beside me. I got up and ran onto the pavement. An armoured personnel carrier drove forward too, and discharged a round of bullets. Everyone searched for cover. I heard Wang Fei scream. I looked back, but the yellow smoke was still too thick to see anything clearly. I waited. I knew the tank must have driven over some people. As the smoke cleared, a scene appeared before me that singed the retinas of my eyes. On the strip of road which the tank had just rolled over, between a few crushed bicycles, lay a mass of silent, flattened bodies. I could see Bai Ling’s yellow and white striped T-shirt and red banner drenched in blood. Her face was completely flat. A mess of black hair obscured her elongated mouth. An eyeball was floating in the pool of blood beside her. Wang Fei’s flattened black megaphone lay on her chest, next to a coil of steaming intestine. Her right arm and hand were intact. Slowly two of the fingers clenched, testifying that a few moments before, she’d been alive.